philippesaner

[philippesaner]

#the trans puppygirl evidence is compelling

All jokes aside, the trans evidence is weak but he unambiguously canonically wishes he wasn't human. Like, when he gets a wish from an evil genie, he uses it to become a monster.

Laios....

[philippesaner]

Oh, is that so?

I was pretty far from the frontlines on that one, so I can't say for sure. But I think it serves my point no matter who thought adding the word "girl" to a post automatically made it horny.

I do miss tits and beer liberalism, but if I'm being honest I do not trust Americans (or Canadians, maybe europeans could do it but I doubt it) to be handle "women are hot and sex is good and fun and it's cool to want it" without turning it into "women are the sex class women are for having sex with thats your role ladies to have sex with men"

[philippesaner]

I don't think the this-too-is-yuri thing is always about women being made of sex. But I think it often is.

Though the worst example I've come across recently was unrelated to that. People talking about Caroline Ellison made running a fraudulent financial organization sound like a sex act.

I do miss tits and beer liberalism, but if I'm being honest I do not trust Americans (or Canadians, maybe europeans could do it but I doubt it) to be handle "women are hot and sex is good and fun and it's cool to want it" without turning it into "women are the sex class women are for having sex with thats your role ladies to have sex with men"

[philippesaner]

Eh, we get tons of that without tits and beer liberalism. Even without heterosexuality.

A lot of yuri fandom seems to be based on the idea that women are made out of sex. This too is yuri, because everything a woman does or fails to do is ultimately about love and sex.

And who can forget this nonsense?

So I doubt the return of the tits and beer would actually do any damage on that front.

I do miss tits and beer liberalism, but if I'm being honest I do not trust Americans (or Canadians, maybe europeans could do it but I doubt it) to be handle "women are hot and sex is good and fun and it's cool to want it" without turning it into "women are the sex class women are for having sex with thats your role ladies to have sex with men"

[philippesaner]

If it turned out that Epstein did kill himself, but was deliberately allowed or encouraged to do so, would you count that as a point for or against the theory that he "didn't kill himself"?

Because that always seemed likely to me. He had every reason to commit suicide and it appears that he already tried once. But the breakdown of the anti-suicide measures around him is beyond suspicious.

I saw a TikTok re-posted to tumblr the other day, and in it we see a woman messaging men on some kind of dating app "tell me about your favourite conspiracy theory" or "tell me about your most controversial belief".

The men respond with something controversial, the woman makes a reaction face, and then there's a cut to the next chat. I can see why this would make sense if you're actually looking for controversial people, but in this case, it's just rage bait and #content. And even if you're doing this in real actual dating, it's kind of a red flag to set up potential partners to fail or to select for dishonesty and self-censorship.

But there's another aspect to this, one that has nothing to do with girl power or jezebel style troll feminism: I would not know what to say. Which beliefs are actually controversial?

I could find some beliefs that are completely true, but mired in the culture wars. I could say something like "The people Kyle Rittenhouse shot were actually white". It's true, but that might already be controversial. I could say something like about nuclear energy and electric cars that will rile people up.

But I don't actually know what people mean by "controversial". Are these beliefs that cause the most and worst arguments? Or are these beliefs where society is just split down the middle?

The Dress was actually blue. People use it as a metaphor for arguments on the Internet, and they say I am missing the point when I say it was actually blue, but it was actually blue, and thus completely appropriate for a mother of the bride to wear to a wedding.

People are were almost evenly split about The Dress, but it's not controversial. What is more controversial is suggesting that there is a boring, objective or basically-objective answer, and this doesn't tell us anything.

People are pretty split about pineapple of pizza, and the pineapple people are in the minority.

But is this what you mean? Is this as what people understand?

It could also mean "what is your most unpopular idea?"

I know some people who think you should only shower every other day, and it's an unpopular idea even among among people who agree with it.

The thing is I don't actually think showering every other day to save water is important. It would save water, and it would be good for your skin, but it would be bad for society. It would be one of those edgy rationalist beliefs, or one of those "quick fix" ideas like banning straws that doesn't actually solve the problem.

So the better question might be "what is your most unpopular idea that you still think is important?" I have some ideas about open source, AI, software complexity, and usability that are outside of the area of expertise of most people, and they sound weird to people who aren't programmers, and maybe overly strident to FAANG people. The most unpopular-but-important idea I have that normies understand well enough to take issues with is that corporations deliberately set up interactions with customer service in a way that employees have no choice but to defend shitty company policy when they sell somebody a broken product. Now that's an unpopular belief!

A close second is "third-party fact checking orgs are wrong in predictable ways too often to be trustworthy to people who would need to be persuaded by third-party fact checking." Even if fact checking organisations get it right most of the time, that's not enough. And if you actually fact-check with the level of granularity, diligence, and attention to detail that you would actually need, people can just flood the zone with shit that is wrong in subtle ways.

It could mean "what do you strongly believe, that the fewest people would agree with you on?" I don't know which of my strongly held beliefs is the least agreed-upon. I actually can't answer that.

It could mean "what do belief to you secretly hold, that you suspect most people hold secretly?" Here is I can find a bunch of stuff that fits the bill, where I suspect that 20% of society openly agree, 40% secretly agree with me but will admit it anonymously or one-on-one, 20% actually disagree with me, and a further 20% will falsify their agreement even to a stranger, and only reveal their actual beliefs to their closest friends and family.

It could mean "tell me about your favourite conspiracy theory!" Here it's a close race between "Bigfoot shot JFK", my old stand-by and placeholder for a conspiracy theory, and "The government replaced the incandescent sun with a low-energy fluorescent sun". That last one explains the rise in depression through a lack of natural light, but it's completely absurd. It's much more absurd than the moon landing hoax or flat earth, and it's not really compatible with the moon landing hoax, but it more or less requires flat earth to also be true. If they really replaced the sun to save energy, then we might as well live on a flat earth.

It could mean "tell me about your the conspiracy theory you think is most likely to be true". That's an easy one: Epstein didn't kill himself. I mean, c'mon. Sure I could find other conspiracy theories that are just literally true and a matter of public record, like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, or the Phoebus Cartel, or that Atrazine actually disrupts the sexual development of frogs, but among all the conspiracies that aren't proven, Epstein easily wins.

[philippesaner]

Was any of that secret?

To pick an easy example, if America funding Voice of America was meant to be a secret, I don't think it would be called that.

Gain-of-function research isn't secret either. Does this public announcement from the NIH look secretive to you? Even if you believe that it caused covid - which I'm inclined to doubt, by the way - they said they were gonna do it and why.

I don't know if the Afghan poppy stuff was ever publicly announced, but I certainly never saw attempts to hide it.

Understand that USAIDs activities were as much a secret inside the beltway as Weinstein's activities were in Hollywood.

This was clearly an open secret.

If you are carrying water for any politician or group of politicians, you are deceiving yourself, plain and simple.

STOP defending these people.

This message is for everyone, but especially those trying to give Republicans a pass on this.

[philippesaner]

What?

Do you think medical research is some kind of corrupting, evil force?

And I do still want an answer to my question. Which "activities" are meant to have been an open secret?

As for @isaacsapphire, if you don't think Africans get better healthcare you should refrain from heavily implying so with statements like "the US government will again use taxpayer dollars to buy it for Africa… while the American lower and even middle class struggle to afford it."

Anyway, as horrible as the American healthcare system is, with its worst-of-both-worlds public-private combination...you know diabetics. Not too long ago, they'd be too dead to know.

Understand that USAIDs activities were as much a secret inside the beltway as Weinstein's activities were in Hollywood.

This was clearly an open secret.

If you are carrying water for any politician or group of politicians, you are deceiving yourself, plain and simple.

STOP defending these people.

This message is for everyone, but especially those trying to give Republicans a pass on this.

[philippesaner]

No, based on past performance, medical breakthroughs would benefit everyone enormously. Healthcare now is so much better than healthcare a hundred years ago, the comparison is borderline comical.

Also, if you really think that humanitarian aid gives Africans better healthcare than Americans, you need to turn off whichever news sources you follow and return to the planet you live on.

But that's not really why I reblogged this. What are the "USAID activities" that were meant to be an open secret?

If the secret was the existence of government-funded medical research on animals...well, I have a theory for you. I think NASA might be under the control of the American government.

Understand that USAIDs activities were as much a secret inside the beltway as Weinstein's activities were in Hollywood.

This was clearly an open secret.

If you are carrying water for any politician or group of politicians, you are deceiving yourself, plain and simple.

STOP defending these people.

This message is for everyone, but especially those trying to give Republicans a pass on this.

[philippesaner]

Martin Niemöller thought he was part of the class intended to benefit from Nazism. He didn't think they'd ever come for him. Then he found out otherwise. That's why he wrote that poem.

Anyone who believes what you're saying now is likely to make the same discovery over the next few years.

first they came for the immigrants, and i didn't speak up because i was part of the class intended to benefit from further immigrant exploitation. then they never came for me because i was part of the class intended to benefit from the exploitation of marginalised people, so it's all fine and i was right not to worry about things that didn't directly affect me

[philippesaner]

As far as I can tell, there isn't an egg shortage in North America. There's an egg shortage in the US.

We're doing fine.

Has the egg shortage in North America negatively impacted your oviposition fetish at all?

No.

[philippesaner]

Yes, that is indeed how this guy is.

Im a misogynist against men

[philippesaner]

The comfort zone has gone up by about a decade because Tumblr's userbase has aged by about a decade. Isn't that exactly what you'd expect?

I think the surest disproof of all this "Tumblr's aging userbase" stuff is how deeply uncomfortable the community is with acknowledging that people over thirty fuck.

[philippesaner]

Generally speaking, it's good to be nice to people. Especially people who are suffering.

And if an appeal to kindness doesn't work on you, consider the consequentialist argument. When they get out, we want them to know that not everybody is their enemy. That there is room for compassion in this world; that it is possible to live a good life.

In the general case, more people should send letters to prisoners, including strangers, including "common law criminals". Social isolation is one of the most harrowing part of the ordeal. Doing such prisoner correspondence is one of the main activist focuses of prisoners' rights groups for a reason, and they often offer advice for you to do it on your own too.

[philippesaner]

Notably, this approach is catastrophically failing him with the video game crowd. Pretending to be an amazing player of various games has earned him nothing but mockery, derision, and humiliation.

Building your community around a skill of some kind provides a certain level of protection against scam-mongering tourists.

Elon Musk has very effectively cycled through groups of suckers with extremely formulaic identifiers (the I Fucking Love Science facebook page and that epic bacon The Oatmeal guy who is basically a case study in this whole phenomenon, startup guys, reddit in general, crypto into meme stocks types, lately speeding towards MAGA) taking them for all of their dumb money and then drifting off towards a different bunch of people who you can infiltrate by stealing a couple random memes from them, and ultimately leveraging all that into a blatant speculative bubble that used to eat short sellers who couldn't remain solvent longer than the market could remain irrational for breakfast and makes him the "richest" man alive, and it all makes people who see through the hype think he's some kind of master chameleon perfect con artist

and the thing is he does systematically go from one of these easy-to-infiltrate groups to another, and he does relatively effectively drain whatever money its members don't know what to do with, but I think the reason Elon Musk's mimicry is so effective is that it's entirely sincere, just like everyone else involved he is desperately grasping at community by way of trading the same couple references back and forth with a new subculture every couple months, which is why they all recognize a kindred spirit within him, and why they fall for his scams, which he himself may not even recognize are scams until much later, I'm pretty sure Elon Musk doesn't attract money because he has planned out a genius con, he attracts money because he is a famous megalomaniac

that is to say, the initial impression is right, he is a master chameleon perfect con artist, but of the Drunken Master type

[philippesaner]

I love how on Tumblr you can get discussion of scholarly topics that includes swearing, uses no capital letters, and misspells the word "the" twice.

we're sleeping on how comedic gaius memmius pr. 58 is as a person that existed at some point in history. most notably the addressee of thee de rerum natura. also immortalised by catullus as the irrumator praetor. directly involved in some of the funniest and most intricated electoral misconduct dramas for the consular elections of 54, which he also lost. exiled to athens after the trial following said election misconduct. in athens, despite being the addressee of thee de rerum natura, he had epicurus' house fucking demolished to build himself a bigger villa

[philippesaner]

That post on Honduras and the Texas border and whatnot is like ... some fact, mixed with a haze of conspiracy theorism and weasel-y treatment of the truth. "Hasn't seen a normal child born on the border in 20 years," sourced to nobody; Honduras is a valuable agricultural cash cow despite all the plantations being totally destroyed; Venezuela is a victim of "counter-revolutionary terror" because Hugo Chavez' anointed successor turned out to be embarrassing for leftists. that kind of thing.

I also raised an eyebrow at some of that stuff, but I didn't feel like getting into a fight over it.

[philippesaner]

I still can't quite believe that Ziz's name is a Worm reference. I always assumed it was a coincidence, because it's just such an insane red flag that I can't imagine anyone missing it.

Who should I go to for philosophical guidance?

Oh, how about the lady who named herself after the alien god-monster whose voice reprograms people into humanoid murder weapons! Clearly she has my best interests at heart!